


A Labor of Love

by TheCalliopeCalls



Category: Orbiting Human Circus of the Air (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 09:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8973838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCalliopeCalls/pseuds/TheCalliopeCalls
Summary: Stagehand Jacques encounters the Janitor practicing with the microphone again. Jacques just wants to pack up and go home, but something about the Janitor always gets under his skin. The two men learn a little about each other, and Jacques reveals more to Julian - and to himself - than he anticipates!





	

_Oh, great. Just what I need right now. He gets in the way before the show, he gets in the way during the show. Couldn't he make himself scarce after the show? I've got things to do, it's freezing outside, and it's only gonna get colder. I got a five mile walk if I miss the last trolley home. For the love of God, kid, don't hold me up tonight._

These were the thoughts of Stagehand Jacques, as he peered around the wall of the wing and onto the stage, where a gawky, soft-looking young man fussed quietly with a microphone in front of the dim and empty room. Julian the Janitor's routines were not wholly unknown to the stagehand, as Julian had been sneaking around the ballroom and indeed the whole tower for as long as Jacques had been working there, perhaps even longer. He had long known about the Janitor's peculiar attraction to the stage, like a moth to a flame – and, like a moth to a flame, his propensity to get burned for doing so. Why then did he keep coming back? What was this fixation about? He thought he could hear the janitor mumbling softly into the disconnected microphone. Who does he talk to? Who would listen?

“Hey kid. I've gotta lock that up now, scram.”

The janitor visibly jumped, letting out a small, tortured sound, before turning and laughing at Jacques. The fear on his face was real and intense, but melted immediately into a genuine smile. Jacques didn't understand why the kid always looked relieved to see him. Had he not threatened the janitor with bodily harm on more than one occasion? Had he not always been very clear that their realms were separate, and would be kept separate by force if necessary? He was not the janitor's friend. This news had apparently not sunk in for the janitor. 

“Oh Jacques! It's just you. I thought it was Mr. Cameron. The last time he caught me with the microphone after hours he said he'd fire me.”

“Oh yeah? You oughtta take your cues then, kid. You can't be touching this stuff. Belongs to the show. You ain't exactly known for your grace and poise, ya know? That thing costs more than your life.”

As Jacques approached with a hand extended to take the microphone, the janitor hesitated, gently stroking the mic. “I know. I'll be careful though! I'm always careful. This is the most important thing I ever touch, I would never break it.”

“The most important thing YOU touch? What's it to you? You clean things. Mics don't get that dirty.”

“I didn't come out here to clean it. I came out here to practice.”

“Practice?”

“Yeah. Or no, never mind. Don't worry about it, I'm going, I was done anyway -”

“What're you practicing for? You know Mr. Cameron's not gonna let you come on the show. Thought you'da learned that lesson by now.”

“You're right. I just keep thinking maybe someday. Maybe it'll be the right time. I'll know just the right thing to say, and Mr. Cameron will say, 'Julian my boy, I think you've got it! Get out there and stun them!' And the audience will be so happy. If I just knew the right thing to say. I'd like to give the audience that same feeling, you know, like the comfort they always gave me.”

Jacques squinted an eye at the young man. He stepped back, clearly not going to retrieve the microphone anytime soon, if the janitor was off on one of his daydreams. But this business about the audience – maybe the kid was more unhinged than he thought. The audience had never applauded the janitor's intrusions, save for the time he was hypnotized and made a fool of himself. Whatever “feeling” he was talking about couldn't be from experience. 

Jacques sat down on the foot of the stage's large ornate pillar and leaned back, folded his hands behind his head, and let his long, muscular legs splay comfortably in front of him. “Ok kid. What are you talking about. What has the audience ever done for you?” _This will be rich,_ he thought. Whatever the janitor imagined, Jacques knew the audiences at the Orbiting Human Circus considered him a strange little nuisance, if mostly harmless. 

The janitor looked up at him and held eye contact for a second, face frozen as if making a quick calculation. He knew he was being mocked, surely, but would that deter him? It seemed not:

“Well... ok, this is kind of weird and complicated. You gotta promise just to listen and not laugh, ok? I've only ever told Coco about this before. I don't mean the Orbiting Human Circus audience. Not exactly. I mean _my_ audience, the audience in my head.”

“The audience. In your head.”

“Yeah, they've been with me since I was just a little kid. Like, to you this is an empty room, and all the people went home hours ago because it's night time, but to me... to me the room is always full. Even when I'm not on the stage. And they're cheering me on, or waiting for me to say something funny, or tell them a story. I can see them.”

Jacques's eyes darted around the empty ballroom, looking for a quick escape, or someone else to intervene if the kid had a breakdown. _All the times I called him crazy,_ he thought, _boy I didn't know the half._

The janitor seemed to read his expression. “I mean, I know they're not real, haha, I don't _really_ see them. But I imagine them. It helps me.” His gaze shifted back to the empty theater, and his expression looked far away. 

Not totally un-bristled yet, Jacques's curiosity was piqued, so he stayed seated. “Ok. I'll bite. Helps you with what?” 

Julian laughed softly to himself again, but it wasn't a very happy laugh. Jacques had heard this laugh before, and he realized he was starting to know what it meant. He didn't quite have the vocabulary to describe it, if he'd been asked, but he knew it was the kind of laugh you make to apologize for something not actually being funny. 

The janitor spoke softly. “When I was a kid, my mom remarried after my dad disappeared and left us. The man she married was kind to her at first, you know, like when someone wants to be a big hero and sweep you off your feet, he bought her all kinds of things and took her dancing and brought me candy and stuff. She thought, you know, like this is perfect, we're gonna be ok now, Philippe will take care of us. They got married pretty much right away. And pretty much right away everything changed. Philippe didn't have to be a hero anymore so he went back to just being a brute.”

“So what? Some guys are brutes. I come from a long line of brutes. I'm a brute.” Jacques didn't know why he felt the need to defend himself, but there it was. Something inside him prickled at where the story was going, but it felt unconscious and automatic, like an instinct he'd suppressed a long time. 

Julian looked at him quickly. “No, no you're not! You have to listen. You're not like Philippe was. He didn't care about anything anymore, all he wanted was to keep us out of the way. I think he only married my mom so he'd be taken care of when he got old, because he was a drunk. Anyway, he hated me. He made me clean all the time. I used to hate cleaning, but only because he made me do it. I didn't like being alone with him because he'd hit me and stuff. Push me around and things like that. I didn't want my mom to know because I knew she was scared to be alone again and I didn't want her to think it was her fault. So if I didn't want to be alone... I had to make up people to be with me.”

“The audience.”

“Yeah. I used to pretend... I used to pretend I had my own radio show. Just like this one.” He paused. His shoulders had fallen a little bit, and he looked a little hollowed out. Jacques didn't like it. He didn't like, either, the way it made him feel to remember the times he himself had pushed the janitor dismissively out of his way, or talked casually about knocking him around. He knew he'd never actually hurt the kid - in fact, what Julian didn't know was that Jacques had kept an eye on the clumsy eccentric whenever he could, ready to intervene if he was likely to encounter bodily harm - but he didn't like being part of the strange man's history of abuse, even in words only. He didn't like, especially, what it reminded him about himself. 

“Hey. Hey, ya know... you're not the only one who ever spent a little time with a microphone, ya know? I used to think I'd have an audience someday too. I didn't always dream of being the backstage workhorse around here.” _What am I saying? Why am I talking?_ Jacques internally battled himself. _Does the kid deserve to know everything, for sharing one story? Everybody's got a rough life. You don't owe anybody anything. Just give him a pat on the shoulder and move on. Don't indulge him. Don't open up anything. Don't open it up._

The janitor looked quizzically at him, and slowly stepped over to where Jacques was sitting, as though not to scare him away. Jacques didn't change his position, chest still bared wide, arms behind his head, but he suddenly felt very vulnerable and judged. It took concentration not to shut back down, but he wouldn't give the kid the satisfaction of having made him uncomfortable. He couldn't know that he'd gotten under Jacques' skin. 

“Wh-what did you dream of doing Jacques? With a microphone?”

“Well... shit. I, uh... I took a few acting classes.”

“Acting classes!” Julian's face lit up immediately. Jacques was uncomfortable with the glow. It was painfully genuine. Like everything the janitor did. “Acting classes! That's amazing! Jacques you have such a good voice for the stage, did you ever get to perform?”

“Uh, sometimes, but not really – look, I shouldn't have brought it up, it was barely anything! It was ages ago -”

“Like what? What did you perform, Jacques? Did you play a lead? Was it comedy? Drama? Romance?”

“A little of everything! I can't believe I'm telling you this. I never got to play a whole role. We just practiced, ya know? I'd learn a little bit of a part. A monologue here, a scene there. It was beginner stuff, alright? Novice. Greenhorn. Nothing to look at, nothing to be proud of.”

But Julian was tenacious. Jacques should have known better. 

“Do you remember anything from your acting classes? Do you remember any of your parts? You should do one right now, I'll be your audience, please Jacques? That would be so amazing.”

“No. Fuck no.”

“Please!”

“Absolutely fucking not.”

“But you do remember? Don't you? I know you do.”

“... Yes.” Jacques growled through gritted teeth. _Am I that easy to manipulate, or is it just this crazy kid? His grandfather or somebody was a stage hypnotist. He hypnotized me once. Is he doing it again? Or is it just his face? Is it just his genuine, doe-eyed fucking face?_ Jacques thought for a minute and sighed. 

“Fine. You win alright? Fuck you, by the way, but alright.”

“So you'll do it!?”

“Shut the fuck up or I won't. Give me a minute.”

Jacques disappeared into the wing for a minute and wiped his face roughly with his hands, breathing deeply. There was a reason he didn't think about this shit anymore. Why now? _Never mind why now. You said you would, so just get it over with. Then he'll be satisfied and it'll be the end of the conversation. Now think back... way back... before the accident, before the sickness, before everything._ Back to when he was little more than a boy, just a young man with a fuzzy lip and a head full of childish dreams... what was that part he used to play? The monologue... how did it go?

He took a bracing breath and stepped out on the stage. He noticed that Julian had moved to the front row seats and was staring eagerly up at the stage. Jacques suppressed an eye roll, and then, reaching the microphone, became somebody else. 

“'No? ...Well you're right, Mother. I'm going to opium dens. Yes, mother. Opium dens. Dens of vice and criminal's hangouts, mother, I am a hired assassin, I joined the Hogan gang, I carry a Tommy gun in a violin case, and I run a stream of cat houses in the valley, they call me Killer, Killer Wingfield! See I'm leading a double life, really, a simple honest warehouse worker by day, but by night a dynamic czar of the underworld, mother. I just go to gambling casinos, spin away fortune on the roulette tables, mother, I wear a patch over one eye, and a false moustache and sometimes I put on green whiskers, on those occasions, they call me "El Diablo!" I can tell you many things to make you sleepless, mother, my enemies plan to dynamite this place, they're gonna blow us sky high! And I will be glad? I will be very happy, and so will you be! You will go up, up, up, over Blue Mountain, on a broomstick with seventeen gentleman callers! You ugly, babbling old witch!'”

Jacques finished the monologue from The Glass Menagerie and remembered to breathe, coming back to himself slowly as he realized there was a small cacophony coming from some feet in front and below him. 

“That was amazing! Jacques you're incredible!”

“Hey, shut up kid. That was a long time ago, alright? I'm rusty. I got no knack for this.”

“No, I'm serious!” Julian hopped up onto the stage surprisingly nimbly, rushing over to Jacques. “You're a natural! Oh Jacques, you sound just like one of the old Hollywood actors, you're like Marlon Brando, you're, you're so calm, and handsome -”

Julian looked like he'd touched a live wire. He had come too close to Jacques, and they both felt it in the recoil from the unexpected compliment. Jacques felt a weird struggle inside that turned the corners of his mouth all funny and something deep in his gut did the same. 

“Handsome huh? Get your eyes checked.”

He sat down on the edge of the stage, feeling a little dizzy. Julian paused behind him, and he could just barely hear the young man's tense breathing. But eventually, he came down and sat beside him. Not overly close. But still beside him.

“Why'd you quit, Jacques? With a talent like that...” Julian couldn't look at him, but Jacques knew he wouldn't leave without some kind of answer.

All the bluster was gone out of Jacques. He'd been caught off guard by the janitor's praise and he didn't recover quickly from surprises like that. He gave in. 

“I didn't have such an easy time back in the day either, ya know. I came from a big family. I had four brothers and two sisters, and I was the oldest. My old man, he was a brute. Ya know? Like I said. Long line of brutes. He worked down in the quarry. Used to come home from work all full of rage, from breaking his back all day, and me and the others were the first things to fuckin' piss him off, ya know? House full of yelling kids. My mom was bedridden by that time. Polio. So I felt like the matador waving on a bull, right? That rage... had to go somewhere. I was the oldest, that was my job.”

“He hurt you?”

“Yeah. Yeah he did.”

“That's awful!”

“Your step dad did the same thing. You know how it goes.”

“Why did you quit acting though? You could've moved to Hollywood or something, or acted on Broadway!”

“Ok, first of all, you're a loon if you think it's just that easy. And besides, leave my siblings behind? No way. I had a responsibility. 'Cause suddenly, the old man died in a work accident. And I wasn't too sorry about it, neither. But then somebody had to feed the family. I quit fooling around and took up his position at the quarry. I got tough enough. I've worked labor jobs ever since. I became a brute. Just like him. It put food on the table.” He looked down at his hands reflexively, taking inventory of their scars and calluses, like he had done when he first started working. His hard work showed on his skin like a written record on a ledger. They were nothing like the janitor's hands, smooth and pale and delicate. He didn't remember making this observation, and didn't notice in that moment that he didn't remember making it. 

“I think you're really strong to do that for your family... but you're not a brute, Jacques. I don't think you're a brute.”

“Oh yeah? What am I?”

“You're an artist.”

Jacques laughed, a sudden and involuntary spasm of a laugh. Artist? Artists were waify loners pontificating in coffee shops, or shut away in attics somewhere. Not blue-collar folks like him. 

“How do you figure?”

“Well, first of all, you're an actor, whether you think so or not, you've got that spark inside you, I know it. But more than that... you're a stagehand to the greatest show on earth! The show couldn't go on without you. You dream what it's supposed to look like and sound like and then it all comes together because you build it that way.”

“Hey, I just follow orders. Leticia tells me where to put this thing or that thing and I do it. That's all. Don't get excited.” 

“But you're not just following orders! I've seen you. Leticia says 'Put the spotlights here' or 'Make sure the Chinese dragon enters upstage of the fencing team,' but I know how long you spend choosing just the right colors and putting the lights in just the right place, and I saw how you repaired the Chinese dragon's snout by hand when Francois accidentally dropped the pirate ship on it. You love the show, Jacques. When you love something, everything you do for it is art. It comes alive. It comes from how you imagine something could look when someone loves it.” 

Jacques stared into the janitor's face, his own softening with something like wonderment. _Goddammit,_ he thought. It was not thought angrily. It was thought with defeat. _Goddammit. Fucking hell, Jacques, you knew this would fucking happen. Shouldn't have opened anything up. Shouldn't have let him in. But do you listen to yourself? Nooooo. Goddammit,_ he thought again, but he allowed himself to smile anyway. 

“You, uh... you really got a way with words, kid. Mr. Cameron should give you a guest spot sometime.” 

“Julian.”

“What?”

“You always call me kid. I'm not like mad or anything but technically I'm an adult man, I'm 24 years old, I mean... you've never said my name.”

“Sure I have! I've said your name.”

“Not to me! I mean... I'm just saying you should... you could. If you want to.”

“Ok. Julian.” It felt warm on his lips. Warmer than he intended. It rumbled in his chest and felt smooth and thick in his throat. And he didn't know it, but it sounded in Julian's ears the way a hot butterscotch feels. The narrator in Julian's head said so himself. 

But Jacques wouldn't know about that yet. 

“Jacques...” Julian breathed back to him. Jacques _did_ know what this sounded like – the way a well-loved scarf feels when it rubs soft and warm against your neck. Like the way a single Christmas light on a tree fuzzes out and splinters into colorful snowflakes when your eyes get a little blurry. The way the singing saws ring in your ears when you're falling asleep to the radio. 

But Julian wouldn't know about that yet. 

Suddenly feeling the need to break the tension, Jacques looked away hard, and pulled out his pack of cigarettes and lit up. He didn't care that they were still on stage. He needed the cold comfort of a mindless ritual. Julian frowned at him. 

“You shouldn't smoke that in here. The smoke gets everywhere and people can smell it. Leticia knows you do it.”

“It does not get everywhere. It's a big building.”

“I can smell it in the air ducts when I'm... well, when I'm in the air ducts.”

“That's because you're a lunatic who crawls through air ducts.”

They looked at each other, but Jacques' face was teasing, so Julian laughed. Jacques pushed him gently on the shoulder. 

Julian sprang up suddenly. “Hold on. I've got an idea.”

“Ki- Julian- what is it?”

“Just come with me. Do you trust me?”

“Where we going?”

“Just trust me! I promise it'll be worth it! You can smoke up there, too!”

“Smoke up _where_ – whoa!” The young janitor pulled Jacques up with a surprising sort of wiry strength. “Ok, but Julian slow down! _Slow down,_ I'm 33, I'm no spring chicken anymore – Julian!”

But Julian was already pulling Jacques down the hall toward a maintenance closet, with a ladder and a ceiling hatch inside. 

*** 

Jacques looked down at the tremendous drop below them, and then up at the vast, starry expanse of night above them, and regretted his decision to trust the janitor. He was not afraid of heights, but every man has a limit at which common sense overtakes curiosity, and his limit had been reached the minute they stepped out into open air to climb the girders of the tower. 

“Julian... this is insane. It's windy up here, there's condensation on the beams, we're gonna be a couple-a pancakes on the sidewalk with one wrong move... you say you come up here all the time!?”

“Yes! I love high places. Just trust me. I won't let you fall.”

“You can't hold my weight, I've probably got 60 pounds on you, at least -”

“No, but I'll stop you before you get that far! Please Jacques, just trust me.”

He looked into the earnest face and shining eyes peering back at him in the darkness and relented. He was starting to suspect he might do so every time. 

“Ok. So what are we up here for.”

“Well, look around, isn't the city beautiful? You can see everything at night time. I like to think about all the people in the city, and their little lives in their little gold windows, and it's just like the audience. But wait! There's something else. The real reason we're up here. The tower picks up signals. You can hear radio from all over the world up here. Just listen.”

The janitor, wrapping his arms around the girder, pressed his ear to the cold metal, and closed his eyes. A blissful smile came over his face as the sound came through. Jacques watched in cautious awe. 

“No way. How does that even work? You can really hear something?”

“Just try it with me.” Julian grabbed Jacques' arm and pulled him closer to the girder (momentarily scaring the larger man, who feared losing his foothold). Jacques kept his eyes open, but he too braced his arms around the girder tightly, and pressed his own ear to the surface. He watched Julian, eyes still closed, amazed at what he heard:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, from all of us at the Brooklyn Bridgefellows Bedtime Band Variety Hour, on this beautiful and frosty December night, we wish you all a happy holiday, and would like to play you out with a much-loved holiday classic. With a one, a two, a three...”

The first strains of the strings and brass sections rose, and Julian let out a little delighted laugh. “I love this one! Dean Martin once came to one of the parties my great-grandfather went to, and he sang it there. It was Christmas maybe twelve years ago... it always makes me happy.”

Jacques smiled at Julian, as they listened together. The wind gently tousled the janitor's unruly hair under his tattered blue cap, and his flushed lips parted in an easy, lop-sided grin. His eyes fluttered open and settled on Jacques, wide and damp and velvet-brown, so tender, so tender it made the tough spots in Jacques' heart ache for want of that comfort. Jacques' body relaxed against the girder and he forgot he was cold. 

“I've got my love to keep me warm...” Julian sang quietly. His hand inched over to Jacques', hesitantly at first, and then closed over the larger man's rough, strong fingers with long, delicate fingers of his own. 

“Hey... Julian?”

“Yes?”

“I think I know how the thing I did... the acting? The monologue? I mean I think I know how it came back to me. Why you thought it was so good.” 

“Why's that?”

“Because I did it for you.”

“Huh?”

“I guess... ok, look, give me a second, I'm not so good with words as you are, alright? It's just... like what you said about things being art. When you love something. Ok? I love the show, so yeah, I do my job well. And, maybe, I love acting, so that comes out alright. But it's not just that, you know? That's not enough.”

Julian's face was curious, but patient. Jacques cautiously, ever so slightly, stroked his thumb over Julian's delicate digits. 

“Maybe... maybe it's about people, too. Like if you lo- uh, if you care about somebody... everything you do for them... is art. Because. I mean, it's about... how you think somebody might look... if you love them.”

Julian's smile only grew, and he said nothing, but his cheeks flushed and the corners of his eyes crinkled in a way that made Jacques' throat catch. 

_Goddammit, there it is, there's the look,_ he thought to himself. _You done it now, Jacques. This is what you knew would happen. It's just so goddamn genuine. He's so beautifully genuine and you weren't ready for that so it's easier to shut him down and play the tough guy than ask yourself what you really want... why you envy it, why you admire it, why you want to keep it safe. You knew, you fucking fool, if you opened that up you'd wind up here, a million miles off the ground, it's colder than a witch's tit out, and the kid is looking at you, Julian's looking at you, and he's waiting, and he knows now, he knows you're gonna do it, he knows you already decided... to just... reach over..._

Jacques' feet found one steady hold, and then another, to inch his tall, muscular body over to Julian's side of the girder. As the younger man turned towards him, he stepped up to his body, pressing the janitor against the steel behind him. Julian's body shook slightly, and Jacques could feel a pulse against his chest, but could not tell whether it was the janitor's or his own. For a minute, they breathed the same air while all sound and wind and even the cold stopped around them, like all of Paris was waiting for the climax of the story, waiting for the best part of the show, the audience on the edge of their seats, people at home waiting with bated breath in their beds or on the living room couch or curled over their desks where they ought to be working, all the millions of little gold lights below with their little lives and their dreams and yes, their loves, and the art that true hearts make of loving one another - 

“Jacques... I always meant to tell y- mmph!”

Jacques' lips found Julian's and it was the most natural thing either one had ever done. It was a show-stopper. A magnum opus. In Julian's head, the crowd went wild. The Narrator spluttered for words. 

Jacques would not know about that yet, though. 

He also would not know that somewhere below them, from a little golden square of light at the top of a maintenance closet, a frazzled-looking, mustachioed man in a fine suit and a young woman with a bob of wavy black hair and a stiff shirt-dress peered up speechless, until the woman's voice exclaimed, “Ack! For ze love of -”

All Jacques knew was that the brute in him had moved over for Jacques the artist, who painted love on the lips of a remarkable young janitor, with shining eyes and a dreamer's heart, who taught him more every day what a labor of love is all about.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic I've ever posted, and I'm still getting used to how this thing works! Thanks for reading. It's rough being a diehard fan of something with such a small fandom so far. And I haven't seen much of this pairing yet... but I thought it deserved a fair shot :) 
> 
> Julian the Janitor is my whole heart!


End file.
